


I'll Try Anything Once

by Balena (Contemptress_Balena)



Series: "He's Not My Boyfriend!" AU [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: "He's Not My Boyfriend!" AU, Fluff, Human!Bill, M/M, Older!Dipper, Prompt Fill, Slow Dance prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:04:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3140360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contemptress_Balena/pseuds/Balena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hey!" Dipper protested, whipping his gaze around to meet Bill’s, "I just don’t like dancing in front of other people! I do not have two left feet.”</p><p>"Really?" A look flashed in Bill’s eye that Dipper wasn’t sure he liked. "Then prove it!"</p><p>"Prove it? Wha-"</p><p>"Dance with me!" Bill challenged, suddenly beside him and bending close to his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Try Anything Once

**Author's Note:**

> [This note is taken from the original tumblr post I uploaded about two months ago to my tumblr: bipsqvad.tumblr.com]
> 
> "So this started as just a standalone oneshot for a Slow Dancing prompt. I see so many boyfriend BillDips and I really, really want all the buildup to that point (because seriously think of all the great awkward, cute, tense moments that would lead up to them finally dating), so I decided to write a pre-relationship oneshot and now I want to start writing oneshots for a pre-relationship AU. So this most likely will become a part of something larger or a collection of oneshots taking place within the pre-relationship AU."
> 
> So yeah, I originally wanted to expand this one fic before posting it on Ao3, but I kinda like it the way it is right now. If I decide to edit some stuff down the road, cool, but I don't see that happening any time soon since I have Candyman to work on and a new AU I started building last night.
> 
> So here it is! Some kinda fluffy, pre-boyfriends (deciding to call this AU the "He's Not My Boyfriend!" AU lol) Bill and Dipper fic. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Song is I'll Try Anything Once by The Strokes
> 
> -Balena

"I thought I’d find you up here, Pine Tree."

 

Dipper pulled his face from his knees where he had been resting his chin for the last twenty minutes and craned his body to peer behind him. Leaning leisurely against the slant of the roof was Bill. Dipper hadn't expected him to come up here. The welcome back party that was underway for him and Mabel was still going strong, both inside and outside of the Mystery Shack. Bill had seemed to have been delighting in watching the way people interacted with each other in such a scenario when Dipper slipped away from the party to sit up on the roof.

 

Dipper turned back to gazing out towards the forest, a slight frown now lurking in the corners of his mouth. Bill had _also_ seemed to enjoy the attention directed at him by some of the more flirtatious guests.

 

"Hello, Bill," Dipper said curtly.

 

"Jeez, don’t sound so happy to see me." Dipper heard the soft click of Bill’s dress shoes on creaking wood move closer. "Clockin’ out early at your own party?"

 

Dipper still wasn't looking at him. “I don’t really like dancing at parties, and I pretty much got to see everyone and Mabel’s busy so…”

 

"So you thought you’d come up here and sulk about your two left feet." Bill ribbed.

 

"Hey!" Dipper protested, whipping his gaze around to meet Bill’s, "I just don’t like dancing in front of other people! I do _not_ have two left feet.”

 

"Really?" A look flashed in Bill’s eye that Dipper wasn't sure he liked. "Then prove it!"

 

"Prove it? Wha-"

 

"Dance with me!" Bill challenged, suddenly beside him and bending close to his face. Dipper, taken aback by both the demand and the unexpected close proximity, struggled to form a response and managed to only sputter and stutter stupidly as his face began to rapidly heat up. And while he was twenty years old and well out of puberty, Dipper could feel an uncomfortable amount of nervous sweat begin to collect at his brow and down his back.

 

"Yeesh, kid, are you just an awkward human or a busted boiler?" Bill snickered and reached for Dipper’s hand, pulling him unceremoniously up.

 

Dipper, managing not to trip over his own feet, regained his composure and snatched his hand back. “W-why would I do that? I just said I don’t like dancing in front of other people!”

 

"Who said anything about in front of other people?" Without missing a beat, Bill wrapped an arm around Dipper’s thighs and tossed him over his shoulder. Ignoring the other man’s protests (and rather enjoying the punches and slaps being delivered to his back), Bill nimbly reached for the boombox that Dipper always kept near the folding chair and grabbed it.

 

"You might wanna stop flailing for a minute there, kid, unless you wanna eat shit," Bill warned as he stepped to the edge of the rooftop.

 

Puzzled into silence at his words, Dipper suddenly felt his stomach lurch and heard a not entirely masculine yelp burst from his mouth. He was looking at the ground from who knew how many feet up in the air and they were moving.

 

It was fortunate that the music of the party below was loud enough to drown out the choice words Dipper was vehemently leveling at the demon currently levitating them towards the forest.

 

**}O{**

 

By the time they reached their destination, Dipper was still cursing and threatening though he seemed to have lost a good amount of steam.

 

"You have a very dirty mouth, you know that?" Bill remarked as he first set Dipper on his feet in the center of a clearing and then the boombox near the edge with a "Not that that’s a bad thing" under his breath.

 

Dipper was preparing to unleash another torrent of obscenities when he was suddenly struck by the place Bill had brought him.

 

The clearing itself was rather unremarkable; no more than a modest circle in the pines. But the pines themselves were what rendered him speechless. It was dark, but the surrounding trees were alight with the glittering of what had to be hundreds of fireflies. Their lights breathed mutely, bright then night, like precious pieces of the sun sewn into the darkness.

 

Bill pressed play on the cassette player and the gentlest of tunes began to spill from the speakers. As if on cue, fireflies began to float from the trees and into the clearing to lend their luminosity to the two men.

 

Bill stepped away from the boombox and held out his hand to Dipper with what seemed to be uncertainty circling his eye and brow. Standing like this amidst the tiny halo glow illuminating him, Bill looked almost…vulnerable. Almost angelic. Almost…

 

Everything seemed to be an almost when it came to Bill….

 

Dipper knew his brain wanted to refuse; to make him run back to his room in the attic and sulk about what ifs and missed chances beneath the covers. And maybe that’s why it didn't process in time what was happening when Dipper took a step forward, and then another before letting his fingers slide across Bill’s gloved ones where they curled around each other. Bill pulled Dipper closer with a light tug and an uncharacteristically shy smile. He slid his free hand around Dipper’s waist to rest on the small of his back.

 

And then they began to dance.

 

For a moment Dipper was completely quiet, his tongue cemented to the roof of his mouth and his brain probably short circuiting. In an attempt to allow the music to relieve the nerves that were stretched taut throughout his body, Dipper began to sing along under his breath.

 

_“When I said ‘I can see me in your eyes…’”_

 

 _“You said ‘I can see you in my bed,’”_ Bill continued a touch louder than Dipper, his voice like velvet. A mischievous smile tugged at his lips as the beginnings of a rosy glow dusted Dipper’s cheeks.

 

 _“That’s not just friendship, that’s romance too,”_ Bill sang, fingers ghosting up Dipper’s further reddening cheek, his forehead…to pluck a lone pine needle from his hair. Bill smirked in amusement at Dipper’s flustered appearance, innocently showing him the pine needle before letting it flutter to the forest floor, reclaiming his hand once more. _“You like music we can dance to.”_

 

Dipper’s gaze immediately dropped to the forest floor like the pine needle. He found himself wishing for total darkness to conceal the blush burning his cheeks.

 

Silence fell between them and the music played on in the background. The fireflies seemed to float on lazily in time with the gentle undulations of the sound. As the pair swayed, Dipper chanced a glance at Bill again

.  
The demon was watching him with a curious glimmer in his sun bright eye. Or was that the reflection of the fireflies? Dipper couldn't be sure, but he found himself unable to look way and not really wanting to. He felt himself leaning in towards Bill’s face, his eyes wanting to slide shut. He felt his lips loosen their tension and begin to form an unspoken invitation. He thought he saw Bill accepting and mirroring him.

 

Almost.

 

Dipper turned his head to the side and pulled back. His face was aflame and he glared sheepishly at the boombox as if it was responsible for all of his problems.

 

Almost…

 

A restless hush hung between them.

 

After a moment, Dipper cleared his throat awkwardly, still not looking up at Bill. “So…”

 

"So am I correct in assuming that Shooting Star was actually flirting with Princess Northwest back there?" Bill supplied. Caught off guard, Dipper blinked dumbly. He had been sure Bill would have taken the opportunity to make that moment as awkward for him as possible. Instead, he was making small talk about Mabel.

 

Shaking off his surprise, Dipper nodded. “Yeah, she and Pacifica hung out a lot towards the end of last summer and kept in touch when we went back home for the year…Mabel couldn't wait to meet up with her when we got back.”

 

"It’s funny. I can remember when you two were just kids and how she always had boys on the brain." Bill said, punctuating with a light laugh. Dipper joined in.

 

"Yeah, but she’s long grown out of her ‘boy crazy’ phase. The first couple years of high school she still kind of was, but the second half and now halfway through college, she’s got a lot of more important things on her mind." Dipper allowed his gaze to follow a lone firefly sailing through the space between them.

 

"She still likes guys," he resumed, comfortable with the focus being shifted to his twin rather than him. "But she’s also open to the idea of being with girls. And she really likes Pacifica—which I still find hilarious—and I dunno, it’s just the way she is. I really think Mabel will try just about anything once."

 

"And what about you, Pine Tree?" Bill prompted, bringing his face closer to Dipper’s, his exposed eye boring brightly into him, a devilish edge to his voice. The sudden closeness caused Dipper to pull back further than he had intended and Bill bent him smoothly into a surprisingly graceful dip, never shifting his gaze. "Will _you_ try anything once?”

 

A burst of a blush immediately took root beneath the skin of Dipper’s neck and instantly flooded upward to fill his cheeks and ears. “S-shut up, man…” he mumbled. Dipper forced the both of them to straighten up and suddenly became fascinated with a pile of rocks as they once again lapsed into silence.

 

Dipper was still counting rocks when Bill spoke again. “You and Shooting Star must tell each other everything to know all of that.”

 

Dipper smiled fondly as he thought of his twin sister—his best friend—and the bond they shared. “Yeah,” Dipper began, meeting Bill’s eyes once again.

 

"Must be nice…" Bill said in a low voice, his gaze briefly dropping to their feet, "To have someone you can share everything with. To have someone who gets so much of your trust, your attention…your love."

 

Dipper looked up at him curiously. Bill sounded almost…sad? And…and was that a touch of…jealousy Dipper detected?

 

Suddenly he felt his heart rattle and a question long dying to be asked break free from his rib cage and scramble up his throat. Somewhere along his tongue, however, the question tripped and tumbled forward. It crashed into his teeth, shattering into a pile of incoherent consonants and vowels and disconnected breaths, only managing to reassemble itself into a lame, “so…have you danced with anyone before?”

 

"Why?" Bill asked with a raised brow, a teasing smirk lightening his face, "You want to make sure you got the first bite, Pine Tree?"

 

“W-what! Hardly! H-how could—? Ha! You…me…I,” Dipper floundered. Tonight just really wasn't his night for speaking.

 

"You talk much, kid?"

 

"Shut up," Dipper said rather meekly. "I’m just…surprised you haven’t stepped on my foot o-or more like asked me to step on your foot or kick you in the shin…or something." Yeah. Yeah, that was it…totally.

 

Bill’s face broke open in a hearty laugh at the jab at his masochistic tendencies. “Well, to answer your question: no, I haven’t.” Without warning, he swiftly and firmly pressed Dipper flush to his body so that the shorter man’s chin rested on his shoulder. Bill bit back a snicker at Dipper’s surprised gasp.

 

Rocking their bodies along the gentle dips and swells of the mellow music, Bill allowed his eyes to flutter shut as he breathed in the scent of Dipper’s hair which smelled of vanilla honey shampoo. Interwoven with the soft scent was something that Bill could only describe as Dipper. It smelled like the forest after a rainy day and amusingly of pine needles. It was moments like this that made Bill appreciate his human body and all the sensory experiences it afforded him.

 

He stifled a pleased purr when he felt Dipper’s stiff form begin to relax into the closeness of their bodies. Feeling the warmth of their chests, their bellies through their clothes. The way Dipper dared to shyly press his nose into Bill’s shoulder as they swayed, the gentle glow of the fireflies cloaking them in gold.

 

Yes. Moments like these.

 

And moments like when he let his smirking lips just barely brush against Dipper’s ear to whisper, feeling the shiver of the boy in his arms and the reflexive tightening of the hand in his.

 

"Since getting this body I haven’t had much of a reason or desire to test out this particular human activity…" The way he let his words hang made it seem as if he had left the words "until now" unspoken. He ever so lightly nuzzled the shell of Dipper’s ear with the tip of his nose.

 

"But I’ll try anything once."

**Author's Note:**

> And that's that! I always like to hear what people think of my writing so please do drop a comment if you'd be so kind :3
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> -Balena


End file.
